Misha
I read a lot of YA books, and I generally just go to the library and grab whatever looks good. I’m not a fan of dark and dystopian novels, and right now, the other genre that seems in vogue is fairy tales. That’s fine, as long as the author knows how to change it up, right?
I recently picked up a novel called The Palace of Lost Memories, by C. J Archer. It captured my attention right away and I was listening steadily until… IT ENDS WITHOUT RESOLUTION. Like, it just stops and says, “Catch the next novel in our series!”
What series? It’s one story, strewn over, I guess four “novels.” Ugh, whatever. I was enjoying it, so I grab the audio of the next book in the After the Rift series.
Alright… so the next book is all about how men are disgusting pigs who go around raping women or trying to or trying to get the protagonist to marry them or sleep with them. I don’t know. It is very sexual and I wasn’t sure what the story was about other than all men are pigs, except for the love interest who is mysteriously uninterested. What about the mystery of the main story arch? Where did it go? It’s vaguely mentioned underneath the army of uninteresting side characters—mostly disgusting men who stare at Josie’s breasts. Did I mention that she’s sooo beautiful? Well, you can’t forget it, because every man in the book refers to her sexual allure in one way or another.
I finally get through the second book, without resolution, so I check out the audio of the third book. I’m onto the writer this time, though. I skipped to the last three chapters where I got a leetle bit of resolution to the mystery, but I’d guessed that part back in book one already. Not sure if I care about book four.
It’s too bad. With a decent editor, C. J. Archer might have edited out her fetishes, abundant F-words, and uninteresting side arches and had one solid book. I did learn in the final author’s note that she used to write romance novels. Ahhhh… that must be why I couldn’t get anywhere interesting, unless I think rape, incest, and extramarital affairs are interesting, which I don’t. Thanks for trying to write SciFi and Fantasy, I guess?
Julia N. White
Sharon Rene
I guess I agree, but I don’t really understand your reason to writing this. Are you encouraging us to not read the book series? Or the importance of editing? Or to not read Sci Fi and Fantasy?
Jillian,
I picked this book for my Friday book-talk time slot. I don’t have time to read 20 books a month and I don’t only want to choose best-sellers. This was the book-turned-multiple-books I picked up, so this was the one I had to write about. So my blog post turned into a rant about how I felt reading this writer’s attempt at SciFi/Fantasy YA. Not sure you can call it YA, though that’s how it was categorized. Hope that clarifies things for you.
Thanks for this honest review, Michelle. Ugh I don’t understand why authors feel the need to add that stuff to YA!
I have noticed that YA is getting increasingly more sensual and more violent. Personally, I don’t enjoy reading that stuff in adult novels and I hate to see that it has moved into YA.